


Pas de Deux

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1838488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marius progresses, with Courfeyrac's help, from awkward to slightly less awkward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pas de Deux

For Marius, being introduced by Courfeyrac to Les Amis de l’ABC had only confirmed his longstanding suspicions regarding his own innate unsuitability for society.

Some time prior to the incident, during his period of political and emotional separation from his grandfather but inability to leave his grandfather’s house, Marius had, on principle, chosen to shun all parts of the building that he thought of as exclusively Gillenormand’s domain. This enemy territory, marked most distinctly by the _fleur-de-lys_ scattered over tapestries, curtains, cushions and ceiling-panels, included the entire first floor and the garden, though which Marius had taken himself as rapidly as possible on his way into or out of the house. It also included, more vexingly, the library, so that Marius, when listlessly confining himself to his room beneath the roof, had frequently found himself at a loss for reading material. In the portions of the house that he allowed himself to use he could find only that day’s _Drapeau Blanc_ and other items just as disagreeable.

Made desperate by boredom, he had taken to reading his aunt’s editions of the etiquette books of Madame Celnart, which explained in meticulous detail how to arrange, organise and behave at social and domestic visits, _soirées_ and _salons_. His aunt, to judge by her cloistered lifestyle, used these volumes more as a form of escapist literature than a practical guide. Having little else to read, Marius had become uncomfortably and alarmingly familiar with the rituals enumerated on their pages, and, having read little else on current social niceties, he had taken far too much of it too deeply to heart. The recommendations on the rules of dancing, in particular, had stayed imprinted on his mind, and still rose to the surface at inopportune moments. There had been, for instance, this advice:

>   
> _“Never hazard taking part in a quadrille unless you know how to dance tolerably. If you are a novice or but little skilled, you would bring disorder into the midst of pleasure. Beware also of taking your place in a set of dancers more skilful than yourself… refrain from great leaps and ridiculous jumps which would attract the attention of all towards you.”_

Marius had long regarded dancing in general and the quadrille in particular as an outlandish terror to which he hoped never to find himself subjected. But, in broader terms, he often felt as though his entire life had been spent failing to abide by this advice – not merely in the ballroom but in the street, the _salon_ , and the lecture-hall alike.

As a metaphor, it was advice Marius wished he had heeded when he was first brought into the company of Les Amis. Instead, Marius’ pro-Corsican outpouring and its embarrassed reception had made him feel as though he had recklessly taken the floor at a ball, his hand at the waist of a partner he was especially keen to impress, and then, having found himself stepping to an unfamiliar air, tripped on an over-polished floor and fallen on his face, to the mingled horror and hilarity of all spectators.

He had avoided the Café Musain for weeks following the episode which Courfeyrac insisted on referring to as the shortest battle-of-annihilation history had yet recorded. These weeks of avoidance had by now stretched into months, but Marius in his more despondent moments could still hear Combeferre’s reproachful tone, and could still picture Enjolras staring fixedly past Marius with his hand pressed to his forehead. He only wished that any of them had been of a turn of mind to heed another line of Madame Celnart’s on the matter:

> _"When an unpractised dancer makes a mistake, we may apprise him of his error; but it would be very impolite to have the air of giving him a lesson."_

-

Nevertheless, having left the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques for his tenement building in the Gorbeau, and having then discovered the need to leave his tenement building with a certain urgency, Marius did not hesitate in seeking refuge with Courfeyrac again. In doing so he was conscious that, while he had rejected the assistance offered by his grandfather and delivered by his aunt, he found himself quite able to request it from Courfeyrac – perhaps because it seemed in the latter case to be offered unconditionally, in recognition of need, and not as what Marius took his grandfather’s offer to be, a claim of continued influence and ownership on him. So it was that, over three years after their initial introduction, he returned to living with Courfeyrac in circumstances even more reduced than when they had first met.

Courfeyrac’s politics had been further sharpened in the move to a more insurrectionary part of town, and by lodging with him Marius had placed himself back in the orbit of radicalism, although he continued to feel like an inconvenient satellite whose trajectory could have no possible end apart from some eventual spectacular collision. He dined and drank sometimes with Courfeyrac in the vicinity of the rest of Les Amis, but made an effort to evade direct conversation or eye contact, and on one evening bolted out of the room entirely in order to avoid being asked a question by Combeferre – who, despite his solemn expression while approaching their table, had merely been about to enquire whether either of them wished to share the cost of a bottle of wine. Marius had nevertheless shot to his feet and through the side-door with such haste that he had overturned his chair, leaving it to hit the floor with an air of finality. It was three weeks before he could be convinced to return to Corinthe.

Courfeyrac, for his part, had privately expected that Marius would graduate, after a night or so, to sleeping in a bed of his own, or at least on the upholstered chair set just outside the bedroom, rather than continuing to sleep with only the spare mattress between himself and the cold comfort of the floor. At first this persistence had bothered him on Marius’ behalf rather than his own – these conditions could surely not be satisfying to any individual, even one with an outlook more Spartan than he suspected Marius’ to be. However, Courfeyrac began to be troubled on a more personal level after repeatedly coming home in the early hours, on the verge of consummating the night with a charming new acquaintance, only to discover Marius once again asleep at the foot of his bed with the attitude of an abandoned _Bichon Frisé_.

On one occasion, he was forced to explain Marius away as being a visiting eccentric cousin, whose religious vows of asceticism obliged him to spurn all material comforts. On more than one occasion, he had had to decide whether to tactically retreat to the lodgings of his paramour, or to move proceedings less than gallantly to the curtained alcove beside the door, and hope that Marius would not be woken by the rustle of his companion’s skirts being hitched around her waist – or indeed by anything else which might follow. In the mornings after he had opted for the latter course, the vanity of this hope was invariably demonstrated in the determined set of Marius’ jaw as he refused to broach the subject, and his deep blush and resolute nod in response to Courfeyrac’s enquiry, framed with an equally resolute air of innocence, as to whether he had slept well.

There were other evenings when, returning home alone and seeing Marius asleep on the mattress or over his books, his face pale and sharp with frugal living, Courfeyrac had been moved only to an inexpressible affection, and found himself kneeling to gently stroke his friend’s disarranged hair into some semblance of order before settling to sleep himself.

-

Courfeyrac concerned himself with style rather than ostentation, and was not as wedded as some of his contemporaries to the idea that to look the best one must spend the most – although the two conditions were of course apt to combine with merciless precision, meaning that the most fashionable hat in Paris was frequently also the most expensive. Still, Marius’ determination to maintain a parsimonious lifestyle, in the face of Courfeyrac’s efforts to feed and clothe him in a more substantial manner, left him nonplussed. Seeing one evening that Marius was attempting to darn the lining of his coat-pocket by candlelight for the third time that month, Courfeyrac made his habitual offer of financial assistance, and Marius, with habitual discomfort, refused.

“Or, if not from me,” Courfeyrac ventured, “why not from your grandfather?”

Marius gave an almost violent start, as though the needle in his hand had pricked his fingertip rather than his darning, and shook his head.

“I fail as usual to fully understand you, Pontmercy. You are currently sharing with me a fairly top-end red, for which I’ve no objection to paying, and we inhabit a world so upside-down that serviceable coats can be had for less money than that. Why not accept the price of a bottle, or of a coat, from a man, Ultra or not, who will clearly not miss it?”

Marius was quiet. He had been troubled for some time by this same conundrum – or, more properly, by the question of how, if he did not allow himself to accept his grandfather’s support, could he reasonably accept Courfeyrac’s? The fact that Courfeyrac himself had now outlined the problem quite so starkly set the cap on his discomfort.

He had no option but to swallow the remainder of his mouthful of wine, but, having done so, he pushed his glass to a far corner of the table with a baleful look towards it which was, Courfeyrac noted with astonishment, almost worthy of Enjolras.

“I am perfectly capable of supporting myself, and don’t require assistance from another, relative or otherwise. And if it comes to that – _de Courfeyrac_ – when you refuse to be defined by the status of your family, why do you insist that I should be dependent on that of mine?”

There was a moment of silence. Marius, suddenly mortified, was reminded of the exchange which had precipitated his dramatic departure from his grandfather’s house.

Courfeyrac set down his own glass, and raised an eyebrow, and Marius, looking miserably at the badly-darned coat bundled in his lap, awaited being insulted in return and then ejected from the building, which he considered to be no more than he deserved. He held his breath.

“When you have quite got this out of your system,” Courfeyrac said mildly, “come and take a drink with me at the usual table. Have no fear, I shall be glad to split the bill with you.”

-

At the corner table in Corinthe, Marius ignored the full glass that Courfeyrac set before him while he gradually unburdened himself.

“I do not, as you state, accept anything from my grandfather, and in view of this I should rightly be ashamed to accept anything from you. I am only sorry to have prevailed on your charity for so long and taken advantage of your generosity.”

Courfeyrac sighed. “Do you think I’m any more deserving of my family’s wealth than the wretch in the street? Or than yourself, who has certainly been in a condition near to that before now – what with starving until your face is paler than your shirt, and wearing your hat until it falls apart, and watering your wine not from abstemiousness but in order to make it last? At close quarters it is very nearly heartbreaking to witness.”

“There is no need to mock,” said Marius unhappily.

“I am sincere. It isn’t as though you’re forcibly expropriating my family’s estate, and obliging me to change my name to something like Egalité. Families acquire wealth by chance or force, and not through merit. Bossuet, of course, by sheer bad fortune has lost his estate, and by sheer good fortune I have kept mine. There is no divinely-ordained place in the hierarchy to which families are entitled, and those who are pleased to find themselves in a comfortable position materially should do everything to make themselves uncomfortable at heart.”

“But I cannot in all conscience let your wealth support me, and give you nothing in exchange.”

“Not at all. I can’t give my money away quickly enough, and I long for the day when we will gain for everyone sufficient bread, land, wealth, and coats which do not give their wearers the aspect of having just come from a funeral. Until that day dawns, please accept the occasional meal and the use of my bedroom floor, and you may pay me back in whichever coin you wish, or not at all.”

He sat back in the chair, as though the matter had been settled. “And now, come with us to the dance this evening – and stay longer than you did at Sceaux. Who knows, you may even secure a girl fit to make you forget your lady of the Luxembourg for the evening.”

“That is another thing,” said Marius with a sigh.

Drawing a deep breath, he explained that his horror of debt was outweighed only by his aversion to dancing, and that he felt himself both incapable and unworthy of dancing a quadrille with any woman he might encounter.

“Nor,” he concluded glumly, “can I even be sure of the right conversation to make while doing so.”

“The right conversation – while dancing a quadrille! Marius, have you been reading,” and Courfeyrac pronounced his next words with a singular and emphatic distaste, “manuals of etiquette?”

Marius looked askance and bit his lip. “I may have been.”

Enlightenment passed over Courfeyrac’s face. “So you have been basing your conduct on the rigid and restrictive ways of the Baroque ballroom? You’re no longer in your grandfather’s house, as you must be aware, and you must stop behaving as though you are there still. To know the most judicious way of knotting a cravat is one thing, but this is a matter of personal judgement – not of trimming one’s own cloth to fit a preconceived pattern. There are as many correct ways to dance as there are models of reciprocal friendship. It is only necessary to know the rules of etiquette in order to discard them.”

He got to his feet and offered Marius his arm. “Come, I shall teach you the waltz. It is the most informal and heathen of dances, which makes it naturally the most worthwhile.”

Marius stood, linked his hand with Courfeyrac’s, and, with a hesitancy that eventually gave way to assurance, let himself be led.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr's [Mini Mis fest](http://minimisfest.tumblr.com/) and beautifully illustrated [here](http://minimisfest.tumblr.com/post/89473259984/pas-de-deux-fic-by-saintjustified-germinal-on) by @bootssss :)
> 
> There is a Madame Celnart etiquette manual from 1833 [here](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40901/40901-h/40901-h.htm); I took the liberty of assuming they would also have been around a few years earlier, but apologies for any inaccuracy.


End file.
